1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bean sprouts-like articles transfer conveyor device comprising a transfer conveyor having its surface provided with a plurality of needle members for transferring various kinds of bean sprouts, cut vegetables, mesclun greens or other slender shape articles (all these articles are hereinafter jointly referred to as “bean sprouts-like articles”).
2. Description of the Prior Art
As the bean sprouts-like articles are easily entangled with each other or biased to be lumped together to be thus hardly transferred with a good metering ability in a dispersed state, when they are to be transferred, such a transfer device as comprises a transfer conveyor provided with a plurality of needle members rising from a surface of the transfer conveyor is often used. For example, if the bean sprouts-like articles are to be metered by a predetermined quantity to be packaged, in order to accurately carry out the metering, it is required to uniformly supply the bean sprouts-like articles in the dispersed state into a metering bucket. In order to so uniformly transfer the bean sprouts-like articles, a transfer device comprising a transfer conveyor provided with a plurality of needle members rising from a surface of the transfer conveyor is used (Patent Documents 1 and 2 below).
Nevertheless, in the conventional transfer device comprising the transfer conveyor provided with the plurality of needle members rising from the surface of the transfer conveyor, the bean sprouts-like articles are often entangled or caught on the needle members so that they do not fall down from a delivery end of the transfer conveyor but enter a return running path and are removed from the transfer conveyor by a scraper or the like in the return running path together with unnecessary matters sticking to the transfer conveyor, such as dust, broken fractions, roots, shells, etc. While the bean sprouts-like articles so removed from the transfer conveyor in the return running path are disposed as waste, quantity thereof is by no means small. In the waste removed from the transfer conveyor to be disposed, there are mixed not a small quantity of good bean sprouts-like articles that have been merely entangled or caught on the needle members, as mentioned above. Hence, if the quantity of the good bean sprouts-like articles to be disposed becomes large, profitability of producing the bean sprouts-like articles will be badly affected.
Also, the bean sprouts-like articles that have been entangled on the needle members to become a lump state may sometimes fall down from the transfer conveyor at the delivery end thereof. If the bean sprouts-like articles transferred are delivered not in the dispersed state but in the lump state from the transfer conveyor, there arises a problem that accuracy of a metering apparatus receiving the delivered bean sprouts-like articles for metering a predetermined quantity thereof will be badly affected.
As seen in the Patent Documents 1 and 2, in order to solve the problem that the bean sprouts-like articles are delivered in the lump state from the transfer conveyor, the delivery end of the transfer conveyor provided with the needle members is fitted with a loosening device comprising a vibrating plate or a loosening device that comprises a plurality of needle members and is displaceable so that the bean sprouts-like articles falling down in the lump state gives no bad influence on the metering device. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to reduce the quantity of the bean sprouts-like articles that stick to the needle members to be transferred to the return running path and removed as waste together with the unnecessary matters.                Patent Document 1: Japanese laid-open patent application No. 1988-152516        Patent Document 2: Japanese laid-open patent application No. 1988-281901        